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  The Godfather Part III: Italy's Berlusconi Preens for Comeback

The Godfather Part III Italy's Berlusconi Preens for Comeback

By Alexander Smoltczyk

Part 3: Resentment in the North

Flavio Tosi is unshaven and wears his shirt open at the collar. This lends him the -- presumably deliberate -- air of an Ahmadinejad of the Northern Italian revolution. Tosi is the new leader of the Northern League and, since May 2007, the mayor of Verona, the legendary city of Romeo and Juliet within sight of the Alps.

"We fixed our healthcare system," he says. "It was brutal. Why should we pay for the €2 billion ($3.2 billion) deficit of hospitals in (the southern region of) Campania?"

Tosi speaks with a strong Venetian accent. Founded 17 years ago, the Northern League of Umberto Bossi is anchored in the Emilia Romagna, Venice and Lombardy regions. It likes to refer to Northern Italy as "Padania."

In some areas, it is as entrenched as, say, the Republicans in Texas. It has its own newspaper and a television station. The signs in areas where the Northern League controls the local government are bilingual, with curious accents and "Padanese" umlauts. It's as if New Yorkers had suddenly decided to refer to their home city as "Nèw Yörk."

Tosi's fellow League member Giancarlo Gentilini, from Treviso, once proposed dressing illegal immigrants up as rabbits as target practice for hunters -- "bang bang bang," as he put it. Tosi himself was once taken to court on charges of inciting racial hatred, in a case involving the removal of a Roma camp. It is yet another of Italy's contradictions that, according to one charity, efforts to integrate immigrants in 2006 were the strongest in Northern League strongholds like Treviso.

Verona's mayor isn't calling for an immediate separation from Mezzogiorno, as southern Italy is sometimes called. "But the south must stick to the rules," he says. "Campania received billions of euros to deal with its garbage problems. Nothing happened." Businesspeople in the north, says Tosi, are tired of being taxed at a rate of 43 percent, simply because the government is incapable of managing its money.

But the league was part of the Berlusconi government for five years, and there were no reforms. The two parties have joined forces again for this weekend's election. "Berlusconi is a predator," says Tosi. "He senses that people want reforms now. We are giving him this one last chance. Otherwise the system will fall apart."

A large photograph of the pope hangs behind Tosi's desk, where a portrait of current Italian President Giorgio Napolitano used to be. The switch was one of Tosi's first official acts.

The mythical Padania is one of Europe's wealthiest regions. The A4 Autostrada between Milan and Verona is lined with flat-roofed factory buildings, stylish office buildings and machinery. They represent thousands of small and mid-sized companies no one has ever heard of, companies that are successfully doing business in places like Slovenia and China.

Hardly any of them receives government subsidies, and not all of them pay every conceivable tax, but many are creative and all are filled with contempt for Rome and its politics. According to American author Thomas Friedman, this is the Italy that is best prepared for globalization: "Italy, in some ways, is the ultimate post-industrial society," he wrote. "It has no government!"

Is the flexible treatment of the law perhaps the secret that keeps Italian society functioning? "No," says journalist Marco Travaglio, a well-known chronicler of Italian scandals. "If for no other reason, simply because Italy doesn't function."

"Public contracts cost twice as much as they do abroad, and their implementation takes three times as long," says Travaglio. "We are deeply in debt, which is a consequence of corruption and political nepotism. Jobs don't go to the most capable, but to those with the right connections. The good ones move abroad. No, we pay a high price for our picturesque Italian conditions."

Voters feel poorer than before. According to the most recent statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), real wages have grown at a lower rate in Italy than in Greece and Spain. High taxes and a high cost of living are to blame, as are the debts of the Dolce Vita era and the failure to invest in infrastructure, education and energy. In other words, the past is to blame.

In a 2007 book entitled "Mani Sporche" ("Dirty Hands"), Travaglio and his co-authors examine in detail the scandals of the last seven years, from a soccer scandal to a wire-tapping affair to allegations of corruption and prostitution surrounding the head of the royal House of Savoy. The book, a bestseller, is the size of a shoebox and weighs just less than one kilogram.

"Politics is not the solution, but the problem," says Travaglio. "The parties, both camps, have seen to it that crimes fall under the statute of limitations more quickly and that litigation takes longer."

According to an estimate by the Rome-based research institute Censis, there were more than 5 million criminal cases pending in Italy at the end of 2006. Even worse, the limitation period is not suspended at the beginning of a trial. A lengthy trial is all it takes for a case to vanish into thin air and allow the defendant to go scot-free. This is how many scandals in Italy come to an end.

It recently came to light that Italy had 2 million houses that were not supposed to exist, according to the land register. It was like the discovery of a continent.

When German financial investigators tracked down untaxed assets tucked away in Liechtenstein, the German tax authorities collected €30 million ($47 million) in back taxes within a few weeks. In Italy, this sum is smaller than the fine that was slapped on a single tax evader, champion motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi.

There are currently 24 convicted Italian criminals who hold seats in the Italian or European parliaments. Their crimes include tax evasion, perjury, corruption, violating explosives laws and incitement to murder.

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